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enhttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/italy/2019-09-13/italys-precarious-triumph-over-populismhttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/italy/2019-09-13/italys-precarious-triumph-over-populism?amp=true
Italy’s Precarious Triumph Over PopulismFri, 13 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Alexander StilleUnless Italy's current government and its allies in Brussels take concrete, meaningful steps to improve the lives of ordinary Italians, Salvini’s power grab may turn out to have been delayed but not denied.
Last month, Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s right-wing populist Lega party, attempted a Machiavellian power move. Hoping to take advantage of his soaring popularity, he brought down his own government, with the clear intention of forcing elections that would return him as Italy’s uncontested strongman. To his own and most Italians’ surprise, his jilted coalition partner, the Five Star Movement, turned around and formed a new government with the center-left Democratic Party (DP), until then the government’s principal opposition.

And so Salvini had transformed what appeared as a moment of historic triumph for the right into a major opportunity for the left. Salvini had committed what the Italians call an autogol, a soccer term for accidentally kicking the ball into your own net.

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A Post-Soviet “War and Peace”Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Michael KimmageOne hundred and fifty years after publication, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace still sheds light on the tensions that structure Moscow’s relations with other great powers, and in particular with the United States.On February 23, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the final day of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the most expensive winter games to date and the first hosted by an Eastern-bloc country since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Amid the fanfare and the flag-waving, the Russian leader’s attention was likely elsewhere—across the Black Sea, on the Crimean peninsula. Just hours before the start of the closing ceremony, Putin had decided to invade the Ukrainian territory. One can almost picture him in the early hours after dawn, eyes fixed on a map of Crimea—a world-historical actor deciding precisely how to shape the course of events. Read More]]>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-09-11/bolton-was-trumps-best-match-until-he-wasnthttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-09-11/bolton-was-trumps-best-match-until-he-wasnt?amp=true
Bolton Was Trump’s Best Match, Until He Wasn’tWed, 11 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Ivo H. Daalder and I. M. DestlerIn less than three years, Trump has had three wildly different national security advisers. All ultimately failed.In less than three years, U.S. President Donald Trump has had three wildly different national security advisers: a campaign aide with a checkered past, a respected general, and an ideologue with strong views apparently consonant with his own. All ultimately failed. John Bolton’s firing is just the latest and most dramatic episode in Trump’s national security travails. Though the outgoing adviser drove tough policies on Iran and other issues, his peremptory, no-compromise style proved, over time, unacceptable to the president, who “disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions.” His firing underscores the difficulty in filling this particular role, whether with an honest broker or a straightforward adviser, for a president who disdains process and tends to follow his “gut.” Read More]]>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/india/2019-09-11/roots-hindu-nationalisms-triumph-indiahttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/india/2019-09-11/roots-hindu-nationalisms-triumph-india?amp=true
The Roots of Hindu Nationalism’s Triumph in IndiaWed, 11 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Kanchan ChandraThe decline of secularism in India was set in motion not by the BJP but by the other great force in Indian politics, the Congress party.When Indians voted in parliamentary elections earlier this year, they did more than just elect a government. They also participated in the birth of India as a Hindu nation with a state to match.

India was established in 1947 as a pluralist nation, home to people of many religions, sects, and ethnicities. The country’s constitution provides no special claim over the state or its territory to any one of them—including the Hindus, who make up roughly 80 percent of the population. Moreover, Hindus themselves are hardly a monolith: they differ in the languages they speak, the beliefs they hold, the deities they worship, and the rituals and customs that shape their lives. As a result, Hindus have historically not thought of themselves as a single community or nation.

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The Myth and Meaning of ResistanceFri, 23 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400Robert ZaretskySeventy-five years later, understanding what drove France's "army of shadows."Seventy-five years ago, Charles de Gaulle, leader of France’s provisional government, returned to Paris. For four years, he had lived in exile in London. Now he made his way through an exuberant crowd at the Hôtel de Ville, the site at which France’s earlier revolutions and republics were consecrated, greeting the leaders of the nation’s resistance movements. De Gaulle had not planned or rehearsed the speech he gave on this occasion, but it was perhaps his greatest. “Do not let us hide this deep and sacred emotion,” he said. “There are moments that go beyond each of our poor little lives. Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and the help of the whole of France, of France that is fighting, of France alone.” Read More]]>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-09-06/nineteenth-century-nihilists-foretold-our-erahttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-09-06/nineteenth-century-nihilists-foretold-our-era?amp=true
Nineteenth-Century Nihilists Foretold Our EraFri, 06 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Robert ZaretskyWe are witness to a political world shorn of the values that Dostoyevsky declared useless without God and that Nietzsche pronounced dead along with God.Most historians view the French Revolution as the source of the ideologies that have shaped the modern and postmodern eras. For any ism—from liberalism, conservatism, and communism to nationalism, totalitarianism, and anarchism—historians can make the case that it springs from the cascade of events that began in 1789. An ism that usually fails to make the list, however, is one that now seems to be on the tip of every pundit’s pen—namely, nihilism.

In one of the odder footnotes to the revolution, the Baron de Cloots, Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce—better known by his pen name, Anacharsis Cloots, if not by his chosen title as “Orator of the Human Race”—embraced the term “nihilism.” Determined that the fledgling French Republic be truly secular, Cloots insisted that its citizens avoid all reference to God. Even atheists, he warned, by their denial of God’s existence keep God’s name alive. For this reason, he intoned, the “republic of the rights of man is strictly speaking neither theist nor atheist, but nihilist.”

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Rooting for a New PatriotismFri, 28 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400Robert ZaretskySeventy years since its publication, French philosopher Simone Weil's The Need for Roots is more pertinent than ever. In 1949, France’s most prestigious publishing house, Gallimard, added a new book to a series called “Espoir.” At a time when espoir, or “hope,” in France was rationed as severely as bread, the name was an optimistic one. Barely risen from the ruins of a world war, France was now riven by the Cold War. The book’s preface, written by the series editor, was no more reassuring. It warned that the book, based on an unfinished manuscript, was austere, even pitiless, in its analysis of the desperate condition confronting Europe. Yet “to conceive of Europe’s rebirth,” it announced, would be impossible if we ignored the author’s message. Read More]]>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-europe/2019-07-24/max-weber-diagnosed-his-time-and-ourshttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-europe/2019-07-24/max-weber-diagnosed-his-time-and-ours?amp=true
Max Weber Diagnosed His Time and OursWed, 24 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400Robert ZaretskyOne hundred years later, Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation" remains a guide for the increasingly wretched and violent events now unfolding in our own time and place.In early 1919, Germany risked becoming a failed state. Total war had morphed into a civil war that pitted revolutionaries against reactionaries, internationalists against nationalists, and civilians against soldiers. Munich was the bloodiest arena: over a few short months, the city was ruled by a Bavarian king, a socialist prime minister, and a Soviet republic. The first was overthrown, the second murdered, and supporters of the third slaughtered. “Everything is wretched, and everything is bloody,” Victor Klemperer, a professor at the University of Munich, wrote in his diary, “and you always want to laugh and cry at once.”

These events framed the much-anticipated lecture “Politics as a Vocation” that Klemperer’s colleague Max Weber gave that same year. One hundred years later, there are few better texts to serve as a guide for the increasingly wretched and violent events now unfolding in our own time and place. In particular, Weber’s discussion of the charismatic politician, as well as his distinction between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility, has perhaps even greater relevance in our own era than in his.

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Who Says Foreign Policy Doesn’t Win Elections? Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400Dina SmeltzPresident Donald Trump's foreign-policy agenda is deeply unpopular, and we should expect Democratic presidential hopefuls to exploit it. Rolling into the 2020 election, President Donald Trump is bound to tout his record on foreign policy as a resounding success. While he hasn’t built a wall and expensed it to Mexico, he has followed through on pledges to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate accord, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, to renegotiate NAFTA, and to aggressively press China on trade. He has delivered on many of his campaign promises, whether the rest of the United States supports them or not.

Mostly not, according to public opinion surveys. While American attitudes on foreign policy tend to change very slowly, surveys conducted since Trump’s election in 2016 capture some interesting shifts, especially among Democratic voters. In the era of “America first,” Democrats are even more likely than usual to rally behind U.S. allies and multilateralism. Overwhelming majorities of Democrats support the Iran nuclear agreement, the Paris climate accord, and trade—all of which reads as a rebuke of Trump. What’s more surprising is that the public at large generally shares these views, though by more modest majorities.

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To Counter China, Out-Invent ItThu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400Jonathan Gruber and Simon JohnsonChina’s economic strategy is no secret. In the short term, Beijing will grow the country’s economy by manufacturing and exporting cheap, globally competitive goods. Over the longer term, it will build the capital, infrastructure, and expertise necessary to make the country an innovation powerhouse.
China is not the first to adopt this strategy. The same measures powered the rise of countries such as Germany, France, and Japan over the last 70 years. And even then they caused considerable trade friction with the United States. Washington accused all three of those countries of unfair trade and monetary policies—Germany and France in the 1970s and Japan in the 1980s. Recent U.S. administrations have accused China of the same. But this time around, the tension is more concerning. China is much more populous than Germany, France, or Japan, and its economy could easily become the world’s largest. Beijing also projects influence beyond its borders, sharing technology with smaller countries and endeavoring to create a set of close trade and investment relationships—ones that may one day be based on Chinese renminbi instead of the U.S. dollar.
In his second term, President Barack Obama...China’s economic strategy is no secret. In the short term, Beijing will grow the country’s economy by manufacturing and exporting cheap, globally competitive goods. Over the longer term, it will build the capital, infrastructure, and expertise necessary to make the country an innovation powerhouse.

China is not the first to adopt this strategy. The same measures powered the rise of countries such as Germany, France, and Japan over the last 70 years. And even then they caused considerable trade friction with the United States. Washington accused all three of those countries of unfair trade and monetary policies—Germany and France in the 1970s and Japan in the 1980s. Recent U.S. administrations have accused China of the same. But this time around, the tension is more concerning. China is much more populous than Germany, France, or Japan, and its economy could easily become the world’s largest. Beijing also projects influence beyond its borders, sharing technology with smaller countries and endeavoring to create a set of close trade and investment relationships—ones that may one day be based on Chinese renminbi instead of the U.S. dollar.